If you manage any people or if you are a parent (which is a form of managing people), drop everything and read The Effort Effect. This is an article about Stanford psychology professor Carol Dweck. It examines her thirty-year study of why some some people excel and others don’t. (Hint: the answer is not “God-given [...]
Avenue A Razorfish recently published the 2007 Digital Outlook Report (6230.6K). This report examines trends in the way consumers, publishers, and advertisers employ digital media to have a conversation with each other. Specifically, it covers the following areas: Digital Buzz Digital Media (R)evolution Search Consumer Dialogues: The Digital Class Measurement Op-Ed: What’s on Our Minds? [...]
On Monday, March 19th at 11:00 am Pacific Time, I will be speaking on The Art of Innovation at the Microsoft Small Business Summit. This is a FREE online event that lasts for five days. There are approximately fifty eight sessions designed to provide small business owners with strategic insights from experts in business and [...]
It’s Saturday night in California, and if you’re reading my blog, you need help. MatchActivity is a new dating site that enables people to find others who are interested in attending a particular event or activity. For example, these are men and women listing activities within fifty miles of Palo Alto. Activities that are shown [...]
This is a picture of my copy of Founders at Work: Stories of Startups’ Early Days. It has broken my record for the “book with most stickies.” My system is that the stickies on the top edge are ideas for my next book, and the ones on the side are ideas for this blog. As [...]
The Nancy Ortberg sermon called “Jesus & Your Job” is now back online. Watch it and reap.
I heard a sermon this morning called “Jesus & Your Job” by Nancy Ortberg of Menlo Park Presbyterian Church. This is a wonderful example of a powerful message delivered in a powerful way. It contains an excellent description of what makes good leaders and how to derive the maximum value from one’s work. I doubt [...]
On the day that Apple announced the iPhone, my eleven-year-old son decided that he wanted one. Since then he’s done chores above-and-beyond the call of duty in order to earn $500 to buy one. Fast forward to last week when this news appeared in the business press: NEW YORK (MarketWatch) — Morgan Stanley analyst Kathryn [...]
Mark Messier’s jersey was retired last night during this ceremony in Edmonton. While we’re on the subject of hockey, a friend’s son is blogging about attending all the San Jose Sharks regular-season games (home and away). Apparently, this is part of his “education” because he’s studying sports journalism. Now I’ve heard everything... In what other [...]
This is a great essay about writing by George Orwell. I’m embarrassed to admit that I had never read it before this week. Most people who bother with the matter at all would admit that the English language is in a bad way, but it is generally assumed that we cannot by conscious action do [...]
Check out this blog article called “10 Company Name Types on TechCrunch: Pros and Cons.” The author of the blog, Chris Johnson, provides an analysis of these types of names: Real words Compounds Phrases Blends Tweaked words Affixed words Made up or obscure origin Puns People’s names (real or fictitious) Initials and Acronyms This article [...]
This is the MP3 version (52,715K) of the CommunityNext founders panel in case you want to listen, as opposed to watch, it. Also, you’ll probably find this presentation by Threadless to be quite interesting. This Chicago-based online retailer solicits t-shirt designs from its community and then sells them. Rumor has it that the company’s sales [...]
At the CommunityNext conference I moderated this panel with the founders of six very successful web properties: Akash Garg of hi5 Sean Suhl of Suicide Girls Max Levchin of Slide James Hong of HotorNot Markus Frind of PlentyofFish Drew Curtis of Fark This is the most amusing panel that I’ve ever moderated, and the speakers [...]
The Kauffman Foundation is launching EntrepreneurshipWeek USA from February 23rd to March 3rd. The theme is “What’s Your Big Idea? Take it On!” There will be educational programs around the country. Stanford is embracing this program in a big way starting with the kickoff event on Saturday. The schedule for the week is packed with [...]
Michael Raynor has a doctorate of business administration from Harvard and works for a big-name consulting firm so I had to overcome several deep-seated prejudices to read his new book The Strategy Paradox: Why Committing to Success Leads to Failure (and What To Do About It). He’s from Canada, and I believe that I am [...]
Beginning in the March, 2007 issue, entries from my blog are appearing in Entrepreneur Magazine. The title of my column is “Wise Guy.” Please tell your friends and colleagues who aren’t blog readers that the “best of” my blog now appears in print.
Adrian G. White, a psychologist at the University of Leicester, produced a “world map of happiness.” The study reflects data from UNESCO, the CIA, the New Economics Foundation, the WHO, the Veenhoven Database, the Latinbarometer, the Afrobarometer, and the UNHDR. The twenty happiest countries are: Denmark Switzerland Austria Iceland The Bahamas Finland Sweden Bhutan Brunei [...]
George Lakoff is a professor at U.C. Berkeley Linguistics Department. He’s written a book called Don’t Think of an Elephant His message in this interview concerns how Republicans appear to be good “framers” and Democrats are lousy ones. Here are two questions from the interview: Question: How does language influence the terms of political debate? [...]
Here is an interesting juxtaposition. First, I read “The Availability Heuristic in the Classroom: How Soliciting More Criticism Can Boost Your Course Ratings” by Craig R. Fox, UCLA Anderson School and Department of Psychology. In this study, two groups of students filled out an evaluation of an MBA course. One group was asked for two [...]
Bob Sutton and the mavens at Electric Pulp have created the ARSE (Asshole Rating Self Exam) to help people to determine if they are assholes. This is an offshoot from Bob’s book, The No Asshole Rule: Building a Civilized Workplace and Surviving One That Isn’t, which I reviewed at the end of October. I’m sure [...]